MELVILLE HALL, Dominica — Don't go to Dominica to lounge on soft white sand while sipping a pina colada. The beaches may be the worst in the Caribbean, the roads are harrowing, and a Club Med would seem wildly inappropriate on this volcanic piece of land that travel books cheerfully call "the rustic island."
Thank God.
Go to Dominica if character matters more to you than creature comfort. Go to follow barefoot Rastafarian guides along muddy jungle paths to spectacular waterfalls.
Go to experience enchanted underwater worlds such as Champagne Reef, where delicate bubbles, the result of a submerged volcanic gas vent, rise up from the ocean floor and gleam in the sunlight amid schools of tropical fish.
Go to share the pleasures of a natural sulfur hot tub with a slew of Dominican kids. Go to meet as many of the 70,000 locals as you can, because so many of them are engaging and so few of them annoying.
Go because hardly anybody else does, and that's what makes this place so cool.
To get to Dominica (Doh-meh-NEE-ka), nestled between the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, my companion, Don, and I flew to Puerto Rico, then took a small interisland carrier for the short hop to Dominica's main airport at Melville Hall.
I'd done nearly all my research for this trip on the Internet, because travel books on Dominica are in short supply. (I actually special-ordered Lonely Planet's Diving and Snorkeling Dominica, only to receive a volume of barely 100 pages that gave great descriptions of coral reefs and listed various hikes, but didn't mention accommodations or dining.)
Technology came through: On my computer, I found no fewer than three beguiling places to stay during our eight nights on the island and dashed my travel partner's hopes of, just once, settling in one spot to see all the sights.
My motives were twofold: First, even though the island is only 29 miles long and 16 miles wide, it's got the highest mountains in the eastern Caribbean, and I knew that the travel time to explore the island by car would reflect that topography. More compelling were the two rain-forest lodges I'd found: Crescent Moon Cabins and Papillote Wilderness Retreat. And since I'm a snorkeling fool, a stay closer to the beach for at least a night or two was mandatory.
